Mirror's Edge to feature time trials, obviously
Mirror’s
Edge, the game in which you play a tiny Asian lady who is jumping over
the rooftops of some dystopia for largely unimportant reasons, sounds
like a lot of fun, with its accurate-ish physics, its lack... - Read the full story
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Recent Reviews
Review: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
The basic idea here is pretty exciting. Finally, we get a chance to play as the evil apprentice of Darth Vader, destroying everyone and everything in our path. We’re unstoppably powerful, and we know it. How cool is that?!
The problem, though, lies in the... - Read the full review
Mirror’s
Edge, the game in which you play a tiny Asian lady who is jumping over
the rooftops of some dystopia for largely unimportant reasons, sounds
like a lot of fun, with its accurate-ish physics, its lack of a HUD,
and more parkouring than the Prince can handle, but what does it have
in terms of replay value?
Why, Time Trial Mode, of
course. Certain sections of the game will be pulled out and marked with
flags, and you put your skills to the test to get through those flags
in record time. Not a huge surprise, really. The courses seem to be
pretty short, able to be completed in 2-3 minutes even if you take your
time. What makes it a little different is the inclusion of ghosts,
which show the route your friend took when he completed the course;
making that secret passageway not secret for very long. Otherwise, a common
feature in an uncommon game.
Check out some pictures of the time trial after the jump.
Yep, it's clickable for a higher res version. Just like all the other screenies in this article.
At the Activision event a few weeks ago, Talking About Games had a
chance to preview the most recent build of Quantum of Solace for the
Xbox 360.
The new game can certainly be described as "cinematic". The game
goes to a level of detail higher than you've seen before in a James
Bond game. Not only do they use the likenesses and voices of many of
the key actors, but you'll also be getting near-perfect replicas of
many of the environments, locations, and scenes from Casino Royale and
Quantum of Solace. The developers at Treyarch travelled with the film
crew, going on location with them to watch the upcoming Quantum of
Solace film as it was in production. They even went to the cutting
room floor to find previously removed scenes from the movie and
integrate them into the game. The battles are best described as Epic,
and the level of Bond detail here is truly impressive.
But how does the game play? Hit the jump, we'll tell you all about it.
When we sat down with Spider-Man: Web of Shadows for the Nintendo DS,
our expectations started out a bit low. Like so many gamers, we've
grown weary of ports, because the portable edition of most games is so
often a poor replacement for its console brethren.
So imagine our surprise when we picked up the DS and found that the portable edition of everyone's favorite web slinger
wasn't just a downgraded port. Instead, it was a fully unique game
that focused on the strengths of the DS, taking on its own story
elements, and fleshing out into something different than its bigger
brothers.
Different, and yet, surprisingly fun. The DS version
is simple in its appearance, but has a lot of the formula needed for a
fun game. Hit the jump, and find out what else surprised us.
Spider-Man. He's friendly, and he's coming to your neighborhood this month.
We
had a chance to get some substantial hands-on time with a near-final
build of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows last week, playing the game on the
PlayStation 3, Wii, and Xbox 360. As fans of the movie and comic that
feel like some of the recent Spidey games have been a bit lacking, we
were pretty pleased with what we saw and played. The game's shaping up
nicely, and could become a sleeper hit for 2008.
Hit the jump to find out what we thought of Spider-Man: Web of Shadows
It’s hard being a third-party DS developer. It involves more than a good idea or a decent gimmick; you’ve got to put in a lot of effort, time, ingenuity, and about five or six gimmicks. Jupiter keeps on proving that they have the willpower, releasing in the past couple of years the original Spectrobes, one of the better selling third-party DS games worldwide, and The World Ends With You, the critical acclaimed RPG with a unique sense of style and gameplay. Jupiter continues its quest to prove itself with Spectrobes: Beyond the Portal.
It's been a while since I've been in a massively multiplayer RPG. While I enjoy a lot of the individual elements, something about the second job part of it just turns me off (I've already got a second job, thanks.) Making a game that isn't a huge time sink is something that's escaped the industry. They want you to keep their playing their game all the time, for reasons I cannot even divine.
Warhammer Online feels different. It feels much more pick-upy than previous attempts. You don't have huge hour-long dungeons, massive events, hours upon hours of grinding (quest or otherwise) just to get to the interesting bits. In fact, I don't think I've yet played for more than a hour at a time, and still gotten a decent experience. Mind, the 'hour at a time' bit wasn't exactly my choice…
A turn based, tactical RPG set in an alternate 1930s wartime reality. This sounds eerily familiar to another game which I recently reviewed here. The small country of Gallia has been doing all it can to stay out of a world wide conflict between the East European Imperial Alliance and the Atlantic Federation. Unfortunately for them, Gallia is rich in a particular type of ore which is a highly valuble energy source.
SEGA developed the CANVAS engine specifically for this game and are hoping the gameplay can match the pretty graphics. The nice folks at the SEGA booth were happy to talk all about Valkyria Chronicles and give me a little private time with her as well. Is this game going to be a hit or should I use my command points to toss it in the trash?
Having met up with Jay in line at the entrance to the convention hall floor, we made our way through the doors and he says to me, "So, you're doing Gears 2 right? I would head straight........oh, well there you go." He didn't finish the thought because the giant Gears 2 booth was the first thing you see as you walk onto the floor. 5 or 6 rows of seating in a mini-theater facing a podium and two flat screens. Xbox colors all around shining in that lime hue.
Off to one side were 10 demo stations where the game was running. I made my way over and promptly took a place at one of the kiosks. While single player campaign was not running, the Multiplayer on display was fantastic. My first notation here is 'Graphically Amazing'. I'm sure that's no surprise to anyone but it is an improvement over the first GOW.
Hit the jump, I can hear the chainsaws warming up.
I’m going to have to come clean about something. I’m not actually a 22-year old male. I am, in fact, a 7-year old girl. There, I said it. Are you happy now? And because I am a prepubescent female, vampires give me nightmares, scary movies make me jump out of my seat, and zombies scare the snot out of me.
Now that you know all this, you can probably guess the exact level of excitement I was feeling when I walked up to the Valve booth at PAX to play Left 4 Dead. As you can imagine, I was not necessarily looking forward to the experience. No, I wasn’t prepared for a poor game; I just don’t like the undead. Call me prejudiced.
So how surprised do you think I was when my time spent with Left 4 Dead ended up being some of the best gaming I experienced on the show floor? Okay, maybe I wasn’t really that surprised that I enjoyed the game. But, I was surprised that my pants were still dry. Frankly, it wouldn’t have mattered if my boxers had been a little damp; the game was so much fun that I wouldn’t have cared.
Hit the jump to get into the safe room. But don’t startle the Witch. Seriously, she’ll f*** you up.
Occupying the majority of Sony’s floor space at PAX 2008, Resistance 2 was on hand to dish out a healthy serving of multiplayer goodness to the masses. And for the entirety of the convention, this was one of the few games that always had people lining up to play. In fact, the only times I didn’t see a queue of at least 4 people behind each kiosk occurred during the network downtimes at Sony’s booth.
For the majority of the convention, we were treated to a single, enormous multiplayer map. And for hours on end, gamers were able to take part in matches of Meltdown, in which teams attempt to capture and hold nodes throughout the map. Although these games quickly devolved into deathmatches, it was still quite entertaining to run around with the Chimera once again.
But no matter how much nostalgia-induced adrenaline I felt, the experience really wasn’t that memorable. Sure, it’s always fun to play through some new content in a quality franchise. But, the game still feels like a lot of other shooters, and the setup Sony had at PAX certainly didn’t help the overall aura of the game.
I felt a slight tap on my shoulder. As I turned, I saw Jay “Skittles” Van Beveren, wide-eyed, staring at me with excitement. “Dude, we have to go play LittleBigPlanet right now.”
Let me dish out a little factoid here: When you’re standing three feet away from a 62-inch high-definition television, it’s very easy to be in awe of what’s on the screen. At the same time, it’s very easy to pick out all the tiny little glitches and graphical errors in the game you’re playing. Luckily for us, there was plenty of the former and essentially none of the latter. If I had been able to see my own face, I’m sure I would have looked like a 6-year old on the morning of his birthday.
Every tiny detail was crystal clear, and the action on-screen was unbelievably smooth. Our precious little SackBoy characters danced effortlessly across the screen, each with a unique and colorful costume, and each with stunning animation. Not only did the game look fantastic, but it played wonderfully as well. As we played through three different levels, we laughed, we cried, we screamed, and we laughed some more. The random and spontaneous fun we experienced certainly bodes well Sony’s newest mascot.
Hit the jump for the full description, and find out how Jay finally met his demise.
The MMO game is hard to break into. There’s the one big scary monster that everyone is both afraid of and attempting to at least do as well as, and then there’s everything else. So what makes Warhammer Online different than the rest? I mean, they too have cartoony orcs and dwarves and keeps and a two-sided war and isn’t it just exactly the same?
There’s something that Warhammer Online will have that WoW won’t have: a mature experience.
Review: Star Wars: The Force Unleashed
The basic idea here is pretty exciting. Finally, we get a chance to play as the evil apprentice of Darth Vader, destroying everyone and everything in our path. We’re unstoppably powerful, and we know it. How cool is that?!
The problem, though, lies in the... - Read the full review
Mirror's Edge to feature time trials, obviously
Mirror’s
Edge, the game in which you play a tiny Asian lady who is jumping over
the rooftops of some dystopia for largely unimportant reasons, sounds
like a lot of fun, with its accurate-ish physics, its lack... - Read the full story
I felt a slight tap on my shoulder. As I turned, I saw Jay “Skittles” Van Beveren, wide-eyed, staring at me with excitement. “Dude, we have to go play LittleBigPlanet right now.”